Chapter 1: Emory

On a new moon, Emory Ainsleif returns to Aldryn College, the sea and her healing magic both pricking at old wounds from the Dovermere cave disaster. She slips late into the opening assembly, enduring stares as Dean Fulton warns against the caves and names the eight students who drowned, including Romie Brysden.

Emory struggles with flashes of that night—bloody spiral marks, the tide arriving early, bodies on the sand—and an itchy pressure in her blood that eases only when she draws or heals blood. She locks eyes with Keiran Dunhall Thornby, who once pulled her back to herself on the beach and bears the same uncanny spiral mark, despite not being in the caves. Convinced he knows something, she tries to approach him but loses her nerve amid his friends’ greetings.

Outside, Emory pauses at the Tides of Fate fountain, noting eight memorial flowers. Basil “Baz” Brysden, Romie’s Eclipse-born brother, emerges, and their awkward exchange revives Emory’s guilt over missing Romie’s funeral. Overwhelmed, she retreats to her dorm, now stripped of Romie’s belongings, and recalls the last day together when Romie grew secretive and left behind a tea-stained note marked “S.O.”: Dovermere Cove, 10 p.m.

Remembering how that note drew Emory to witness nine students enter the caves for a ritual that ended in catastrophe, Emory questions her choices but reaffirms why she returned: to uncover what happened and stop it from happening again. Seeing Keiran in the courtyard strengthens her resolve. She closes the window on the sea’s whisper and prepares to attend the start-of-term bonfire to begin her search for answers.